


The Discreet Charms of the Cyborgeoisie

by havisham



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cyborgs, Feelings, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Walk Into A Bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 19:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18763027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: Bucky, Rhodey and Nebula walk into a bar. Grief, future and present, and their own augmented selves are discussed -- or not.





	The Discreet Charms of the Cyborgeoisie

A bar was hard to find in the backwoods where Tony had made his home, but after a couple bangs on the GPS, Bucky managed to find a place where he could get a drink. It was rough stuff, attending the funeral of the man whose parents you’d killed, even in a mind-controlled state. Bucky sincerely hoped he wouldn’t have to do that again. Steve and Sam had been called away on something urgent and while Bucky was very much willing to go along with whatever hairbrained scheme the two of them were up to, but he’d been unceremoniously told to take it easy, get back to the city the longer way. 

If Bucky didn’t know better, he’d say the two of them were up to something. Well, whatever. He’d figure it out. 

The hole-in-the-wall he’d gotten to was empty except for two people -- two people who Bucky happened to know -- by sight, anyway. Rhodey gave him a wary nod as Bucky slid into the seat next to him. On Rhodey’s other side was the blue woman who’d been with Rocket’s group -- Nebula? She eyed Bucky for a moment before deciding he wasn’t that big of a threat -- yet. 

She resumed her conversation with Rhodey. “Is this still a part of your Terran mourning ritual?” 

Rhodey seemed to consider his reply with some care. “Yeah, I guess it would be. I know I had to haul Tony out of a lot of these kind of places after his parents died. I -- didn’t think I’d be here without him.” 

Bucky looked around for the bartender but there didn’t seem to be one. Not being one to mind, he flipped over the bar and started to serve himself. Damned if he was going to engage in any conversation about the death of Tony’s parents. Too awkward, especially if Rhodey didn’t know. 

“How about you, Barnes?” Rhodey’s voice was deceptively gentle, but his eyes were sharp. There went any hope that Tony had kept anything important from his best friend. Well, wasn’t that a good thing, in the end? 

Bucky’s eyes met Rhodey’s. Bucky felt the corners of his lips creep upward into an uncomfortable smile -- one that he’d been assured by Sam was genuinely creepy. “I didn’t really know Tony well enough to say. But Steve respected him -- so did I.” 

Once Tony stopped trying to kill him -- not that Bucky blamed him -- he’d been a surprisingly decent guy. It was hard not to see flashes of Howard in his brilliance, or his flamboyance. But Tony had been made of sterner stuff than Howard had been. _He_ wouldn’t have worked with Zola, would he? 

Nebula tapped her hand against the wood of the bar. She pointed to Bucky gravely and said, “Who gave you that arm?” 

“Why do you want to know?” Bucky replied. 

She shrugged. “I’m curious. Rhodes told me that Stark gave him a pair of cybernetic legs. I was wondering if it was the same with you.” 

“No,” Bucky said. “Well, I got this one thanks to Wakandan technology, but my first prosthetic was given to me by HYDRA. They wanted to make me a weapon and they succeeded -- for a long time.” 

“Hm.” Nebula took a sip of her drink and then grimaced. “Terran liquor is disgusting.” 

“A can of Coors isn’t the best the Earth has offer,” Rhodey protested, so Bucky went ahead and looked for something better to give to Nebula. Everything he brought down, however, she didn’t like and consumed more and more of. Bucky didn’t know what her alcohol tolerance was, being an alien and such, but he thought she could probably drink them under the table if needed. 

“What happened to the bartender, by the way?” Bucky asked, after helping himself to another drink. Rhodey squinted at him and then swallowed. 

“I think I threw down enough money to have rented this place out for the afternoon. Or maybe we bought it?” 

“I can’t own a bar upstate,” Bucky protested, while Nebula muttered that she wouldn’t be able to run a bar from space. Which was -- definitely true. If Bucky thought about it, which he wasn’t certain that he wanted to. 

Another thing he didn’t want to think about was Steve and what he was planning with Banner. The fact that he wouldn’t allow either Bucky or Sam to accompany him to the past told Bucky everything he needed to know. Steve planned to do something stupid, something dramatic, and something that Bucky would once again have to accept as a fait accompli. 

Bucky Barnes was going to lose his best friend once again, having gotten him back only a short time ago. It was so unfair that he wanted to smash the bottle in his hand, crush it into little shards of glass in his metal hand. But --

“Tell me about your sister,” he said to Nebula, whose attention snapped back at him, her mouth pulled into a near-snarl. 

“Who told _you_ that I had a sister?” 

“Quill did,” Bucky replied. It was hard to get the man to talk about anything else besides Gamora and her death, for all that it was five years ago. Well, it hadn’t been five years for him, for sure. Even if Bucky hadn’t shared that five year absence, he would’ve recognized it from all those years frozen and thawed, his life starting and stopping while everyone else lived on.

Nebula seemed to curl in on herself. “I don’t need to tell you about her.”

“No,” Rhodey agreed. 

“She was my sister and my enemy. All I wanted was to defeat her and that way I thought she’d be able to see my pain. But it wasn’t like that. She was -- wiser than I was. I am. But it would be a waste to tell you.” 

“You don’t have to tell us anything,” Bucky reminded her. 

She ignored him and launched into a long, complicated story about growing up with Gamora under Thanos’ thumb, how they were pitted against each other and how Nebula would never, ever win against her sister. Bucky listened. The story reminded him of what he’d known about how Black Widows were made, the constant pressure of it, the danger coming from even the closeness of your fellow sufferers. 

Unprompted, he thought about the Steve from more than eighty years ago. He thought he could recognize the dogged hunch of Nebula’s shoulders, the grim set of her mouth too. She, like Steve, was used to fighting against impossible odds. 

Bucky decided then that he really liked this Nebula girl. She was scary, dangerous, and everything about her was pretty wonderful. 

“I miss Tony,” Rhodey said out of nowhere and they were pulled back to the now, the depressing weight of why they were all here in the first place. Bucky thought about putting a hand on Rhodey’s shoulder. If he’d been Steve, or Sam, he wouldn’t have hesitated but the fact was that Bucky’s emotional responses to things were pretty fucked up now. 

He reached out but Rhodey had already pulled away. “I mean, I thought he was dead so many times, you know? I keep expecting to be wrong this time too. I want to be wrong. I want him to have beaten death again. Just so I can see him -- so I can -- It’s selfish because I know this is the way he’d want to go out, and that he’d want Pepper -- Morgan to remember him for what _he_ \--” 

Rhodey’s voice wavered and he stopped, looking straight ahead. His eyes were bright. “Well,” he said, “that’s it.” He stood and coughed. “I have to head back and see Pepper and Morgan before I go. You two need a ride anywhere?” 

“I’m fine,” Bucky said, and that was true as far as that went. It didn’t go far, but. He’d had eighty years to get used to not being fine. He would need more time to get used to the opposite. 

Nebula shrugged. “I’m getting off this planet as soon as possible.” 

There was a lot they could say -- should say -- to each other. Bucky thought it couldn’t be a coincidence that the three of them had met this way, today of all days. But it wasn’t like he could detain them and demand they talk about their feelings on their cyborg bodies, but that would be a mistake. Probably. 

Instead, he said goodbye to Rhodey -- they’d probably work together again, and it would piss Sam off something good if Rhodey liked him better (that would be hard work, Sam was pretty likeable), and turned to do the same for Nebula. But she was already gone, off to some grand yet tragic adventure, no doubt. 

Well, Bucky had his own tragic adventure to get to as well. So off he went. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this title bumping around my WIP file since Winter Soldier came out, but it never seemed to come together until I watched Endgame and then both of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and getting tons of feelings about Nebula as a result. GOD, NEBULA!! Also, actually, Bucky is actually kind of ... fine? And that feels weird but good? Anyway, I just wanted to write a story where he makes friends with other cyborgs, idk!!
> 
> Thanks to Sath for betaing. 
> 
> Anyway, feel free to talk/yell about Endgame with me. It's been a long, long time, guys.


End file.
